Solo Stars & Lasers battle, Leviathan!!

I had a little time today so I decided to get a game of Stars & Lasers and following on from a suggestion from a friend I decided to go with a big ship being attacked by loads of smaller ships.

So I had one Leviathan and it’s two supporting Frigates trying to get across the long table! And trying to stop the big ship were ten Corvettes, four Frigates and three Light Cruisers.

The Leviathan also went with two fighters stands and two bomber stands to give it a little bit more firepower and some protection against the many missiles that were surely coming its way.

So could the big ship take all the punishment and get across the table? or would the little ships take it out?

Turn one saw both forces push towards each other, they were still a long way apart so no shooting at all this turn.

Turn two and well the first Corvette disintegrated after being hit by a huge number of laser hits from the big ship, one of these shots also got a critical hit and caused an internal explosion making sure it was continuing in this battle!.

That will give them something to think about, coming close is almost certain death for the little ships.

Turn three and the two stands of bombers made an attack run at one of the Light Cruisers, the ships PDS took out two of the bombers but the remaining four almost ripped the ship apart with their bombs, they damaged the ships engines and took out the comms, the Light Cruiser was in serious trouble.

Turn four and the smaller ships are now within range to start doing some damage… but can they survive long enough to destroy the big ship?

Two Light Cruisers moved in towards the Leviathan taking out the remaining bombers on the way past with their PDS and launched off two missiles each at the big ship, while the other Light Cruiser continued on with the crew trying to regain control of their comm’s.

One of the frigates supporting the Leviathan moved in to hit one of the Light Cruisers with a couple of missiles, the Light Cruiser was waiting for its PDS to recharge so could not do anything against the incoming missiles except pray!!

Booooooommmm! That’s one less Light Cruiser to worry about, the engine exploded from a critical hit blowing the ship in two.

Well that was nice even if I now lose that Frigate, it has earned a place in the hall of fame!

The other support frigate moved forward hoping to take on some of the laser fire from the small ships heading for the Leviathan, and its shields are soon stripped and it starts to take damage.

The enemy Corvettes started to move in on my Frigate on the right of the Leviathan, and the little ship could take no more damage, it was hit with a well-aimed missile and spun off into the darkness dead…

Well even though I had lost the first Frigate it was a good turn for the Leviathan, I had taken out two Light Cruisers and a Corvette and as yet I hadn’t taken any damage on the big ship.

Now my fighters had to deal with those incoming missiles, ten in total!!!

Well they managed to destroy three, damn that meant there was still seven coming for the big ship ( I hate my dice rolling! ) the Frigate hit a couple of missiles with its PDS taking them out before they could reach my Leviathan… the big ship then used its own PDS and took out the rest of the missiles, but now she was defenceless against any missiles that hit her in this turn.

The engineers managed to get its shields back up on both ships, but the Frigates engineers were not so lucky and the engineer teams were still struggling to get them back up and running properly.

Turn five and well things were starting to get scary for the big ship as it slowly moved towards the centre of the table, it still had a long way to go and it had already lost one support ship and it was now right in the middle of the small ships!

Would it make it to the far edge of the table and safety? There were still thirteen enemy ships left in this battle, could she survive?

Well I was about to find out, the alien corvettes started to move around the back the big ship and fire off some missiles, the PDS on the Leviathan made short work of the first two… but there were many more Corvettes all waiting to get their missiles fired.

The next Corvette lined up a shot and fired off a missile into the rear of the Leviathan and the Supporting Frigate took it out with its PDS… now they were both defenceless against the enemy missiles!!

The big ship powered forward pushing through the massing alien ships and opened up with its huge number of lasers and two more Frigates were ripped apart killing all the strange aliens in them!

Turn six and the Leviathan was now on its own! The remaining support Frigate took huge damage from sustained laser fire and was finished off by a single missile.

Now the big ship was hurting it was being pounded by missiles and lasers stripping its shields and ripping holes in its heavy armour on all sides.

Then the worst happened!!!! It took a hit to its engines reducing its speed, this was not good and was going to make its escape even harder than it was before.

Then the last of the fighters were destroyed and the Leviathan was totally alone and in big trouble… what was I going to do?

If I kept running for the table edge I couldn’t bring my huge powerful ship killing broadsides of lasers to bear on the alien ships and the big ship was going really slow now, but if I turned back into them I may be able to kill a couple more, but would that be enough?

I didn’t know, but at least she would go out fighting!

So as soon as the big ship was able it was going to turn aback and hit the alien ships as hard as it could… it just needed to survive long enough.

Well after the first few alien ships moved I decided against turning at this time as there were several good targets in close range and in good fire arcs, so the big ship moved slowly forward and let rip with everything she had including a full spread of missiles… and three more alien ships were vaporised!!

The aliens were taking heavy damage but so was the Leviathan, was she doing enough to make it to safety?

The remaining alien ships found it hard to get into good positions and were desperately trying to slow down, while the badly damaged alien Light Cruiser had regained control of its systems and was trying to get back into the fight.

Turn seven and the crew on board the Leviathan were starting to think that maybe they could make it away from these aliens, could their luck hold long enough?

Again the big ship was forced to use its PDS to destroy a lone missile, leaving its heavy armour as its only defence against enemy missiles for the rest of the turn.

It then powers forward into an alien Corvette smashing the tiny ship with its huge armoured hull, and then the captain orders all lasers to open fire…

First off three missiles streaked into the closest Corvette almost ripping it apart, but somehow the little ship survived!

Then every laser on the big ship fired at the closest targets… only one alien corvette was destroyed!! That was some bad firing, the fire control officers were going to get into real trouble if they survived this battle, or at least given more training on how to aim their lasers!!!

That I feel was going to be bad for the Leviathan, she needed to take out at least another three ships with that volley, two of the little ships were in a real bad way but they could still fire their own lasers back at the big ship, so things may not go well in this next turn.

Turn eight and the pilots on board one of the alien Corvettes realised their mistake too late as they couldn’t do anything but crash straight into the rear of the Leviathan and exploding into a thousand pieces, they had got too close to attack the turn before and couldn’t turn there ship enough to miss the slowly moving big ship.

At this point the aliens had five ships left out of their initial seventeen ships, could they actually stop this ship? Or were they all going to die this day?

Well the Leviathan was going to do its best to make sure it was the second answer…

FIRE!!!! The captain roared, kill these aliens now!

The massive banks of lasers pounded the closest alien Frigates, destroying those two instantly, the alien Light Cruiser finally span off into space a dead hulk… at this point the two remaining alien Corvettes hit their FTL drives and decided that today was not a good day to die!

The two remaining Corvettes did not have any chance of hurting the Leviathan, they alone could not get through its many shields and they only had one remaining missile between them which didn’t have much chance of getting through the big ships PDS so I decided to call it at this point.

The Leviathan had taken a pounding, it was down to three remaining hull points, but it had won!

The aliens had fewer points which helped the Leviathan a little but the number of alien ships on the table made up for this difference they just had some really bad luck with their missiles and their lasers… ok it was my dice rolling, but it feels better if I blame them 😊

The Compacted Titanium armour on the Leviathan again made a huge difference by reducing the number of missile hits it received, it soaked up so many hits during the battle it was probably the reason the big ship survived as long as it did.

The two supporting Frigates didn’t survive long but while they were still in the battle they soaked up lots of hits that should have been aimed at the Leviathan, so again they did a great job.

The aliens didn’t really do anything wrong, on turn six they just couldn’t get back into position to fire missiles as they were all going a little too fast and were too close to the big ship, this probably lost them the battle!!

Corvette are highly manoeuvrable when travelling at full speed, but they were so bunched up and far too close to the big ship that it made things hard for themselves to get into the right positions to fire effectively.

Well whatever the reason the Leviathan survived, the aliens were slapped hard! And it was great fun.

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4 Comments

  1. Vic

    Hi Mac,

    Brilliant battle report – you can feel the tension growing for both sides, 1 to somehow escape, the othercyrying everything (including the kitchen sink) to prevent it …

    And that Leviathan miniature is awesome (but then I always was a sucker for the uber ships!) 🙂

    Vic

    • Mac

      Thanks Vic,

      It was a great fun game that was surprisingly close, one turn I felt that the Leviathan was going to be fine and then the next the little ships did a ton of damage and it felt that the big ship was not going to make it.
      I can’t wait to try this again to see if it feels the same a second time.

      The Leviathan is a big lump! very pleased with the way it looks on the table.

      Mac

    • Mac

      Hi James,

      Thanks, I am glad you liked the report, I do sometimes get carried away with the writing especially if the game was lots of fun!

      Mac

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